


Try to Talk Refined

by coraxes



Series: Writing on the Wall [1]
Category: Castlevania (Cartoon)
Genre: 0-100 real quick, Alternate Universe - Urban Fantasy, F/M, dracula is Big and lisa is Horny, sex metaphors but no actual sex, working title: COME GET Y'ALL JUICE
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-09
Updated: 2019-09-09
Packaged: 2020-10-13 01:54:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,490
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20574509
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coraxes/pseuds/coraxes
Summary: Lisa had a great plan to persuade the local reclusive billionaire to pay her medical school tuition. And it worked! Mostly. She was just missing a few important details.





	Try to Talk Refined

**Author's Note:**

> content notes: discussion of sex work and sugaring
> 
> i set out to write some dracula/lisa porn in this 'verse, but i've been sick all day and that's not really conducive to porn so I wrote first meetings/blood drinking instead. so, maybe there will be porn incoming later? idk i love these two & need more beauty and the beast shenanigans from them.
> 
> the dialogue and action in the first half are adapted from castlevania 1.01, "witchbottle." title is from hozier, "talk."

Mr. Ṭepeṣ’s house was…large.

_Vlad, _Lisa reminded herself. _His name is Vlad. _Even months after she’d finished undergrad, it was difficult to remind herself that she could call other adults by their first names. Working at the lab didn’t help much; almost everyone was still either a Doctor or Professor Whatever. Anyway—_Vlad’s _house was enormous. The setting sun highlighted its anachronistic mix of slopping Gothic roofs, castle turrets, and gravity-defying spires. _House _seemed too small a word. It was a mansion, really, a castle.

There was no security that she could see at the yawning open gates, no people, no cameras. She could’ve sworn the temperature dropped a few degrees as she passed through them. She couldn’t even see a driveway—a road, more like, since the house had to be half a mile back from the sidewalk. Lisa shuddered and shoved her hands deeper into the pockets of her hoodie. Something was very wrong here; she couldn’t figure out what, but this whole errand was starting to feel like a mistake.

“Come on,” Lisa muttered, and closed her fingers around the chilly metal of her switchblade. “It’s just a house.” A house with rancid vibes, but still just a house. It curdled in her stomach as she hiked her way up the hill, the feeling that she was _not supposed to be here. _Her steps quickened to a power-walk and then a jog just to get it over with. For a long few minutes it seemed like the house wasn’t getting any closer—she wondered if she’d ever reach it at all, if this was just some bizarre mirage—but then, like a rubber band, the house snapped into place only a few yards away. Her feet crunched on gravel. Lisa took a deep breath and pushed her hair from her forehead, where it had stuck to her skin with sweat.

The doors were enormous and she chewed her lip as she eyed them. Surely she wouldn’t be able to open them alone. She tapped her fist against the stone and the noise sounded pitifully weak. Lisa studied the frame—he had to have a doorbell or something—but after a moment the doors began to swing open with a loud creak. They halted at the exact right width for her to pass through.

Okay, Lisa was a skeptic when it came to most supernatural things, but this was just getting weird. She took a moment to make sure her breathing was steady, and stepped through the doors into the dimly-lit entrance hall.

“Hello? God, this place is huge…” She squinted, her eyes adjusting slowly to the dark. Lisa had no reference for the _size _of this place. Even the big auditoriums at the Targoviste campus hadn’t been at this scale. And she was only in the front room. She cleared her throat and tried to project a little more. “My name is Lisa. I’m from Lupu, just a couple blocks away. I want to be a physician.”

Behind her, the doors creaked again, and the ray of light shining through them narrowed and then disappeared completely. Something _rustled _behind her. “And why,” asked a deep voice, “have you come to _me_?”

“I’ve worked hard to get into medical school. I scrimped and saved and did clubs and assistantships, applied for every scholarship I could—and it’s still not going to be enough. I can’t afford to take on a few hundred thousand dollars worth of medical debt.” Her voice was rising by the end of the speech, years of effort and worry and frustration pressing through. “I’ve heard Vlad Ṭepeṣ is stupid rich. And I want you to pay my tuition.”

His voice was rich with amusement. “I see.” Movement flickered behind Lisa and next to her ear, a stirring of the air. She couldn’t feel any body heat but she _knew _it was him. “And what do you have to offer me in return?”

Lisa had come here with a plan. It wasn’t a great one, but it wasn’t something she had minded doing. If she was smart about this she would have given him a line the way she’d practiced in the mirror. No—if she was smart, she’d actually be _afraid, _trapped with this creepy man in his creepy fucking house.

Instead Lisa whirled around and snapped, “Maybe I could teach you some manners.”

Much like the house, the first thing Lisa noticed about Vlad Ṭepeṣ was that he was _big. _She wasn’t exactly tall, 5’6” in her favorite stompy boots, but she could tell regular tall men from _this. _He was bracketing her when she turned, bent at the waist, and she still had to crane her neck to look him in the eye. Younger than she expected, too. Not _young, _his face was all sharp sallow angles, but he’d been in the neighborhood for as long as she could remember. Lisa had glimpsed him once when she was a young teenager, coming out of a midnight movie screening, and he’d seemed to be in his fifties then. He looked the same now, his goatee and long curtain of hair still thick and black.

“I had to hike all the way up to your house, and you haven’t offered me something to drink or a place to sit. You just _lurked. _Who does that?” she snapped, feeling the color rise in her cheeks.

“I was not aware that entering someone’s home uninvited was the mannerly thing to do in this time,” Vlad said, straightening up. He still seemed to loom but that was probably unavoidable. He was _big, _Lisa’s brain kept insisting, broad too, in a way only made more obvious by the tailoring of his suit jacket. “Nor is asking for money, with nothing offered in return.”

“Your friends don’t do Venmo, huh,” Lisa muttered. Vlad only raised an eyebrow. “Look, I want to heal people. I want to learn. It’s not like you’ll miss the money. And I _am _offering you something in return.”

He loomed more intensely. “What would that be?”

She’d thought through how this conversation would go, thought she was over feeling awkward about it. She had friends who had stripped their way through college, after all. This wasn’t _so _different. Lisa tilted her head. Her braid slid off her shoulder, exposing her neck, and Vlad’s eyes flicked over at the movement. “Company,” she said.

The word hung in the air for a long moment, the hush of the castle so complete Lisa thought she could hear her heart beating. Vlad gave her another long once-over. “Company,” he repeated slowly. His lip curled up into a smile. Not a mocking one, she thought.

And then he brushed past her, up the big stone staircase. Lisa blinked after him for a moment and then scrambled to follow. Oh, god, oh, shit, she was really doing this. Vlad took her up one floor and then turned down one of the large balconies.

“You don’t get out much, do you?” Lisa asked, curiosity getting the better of her. “You’ve lived near the village for as long as anyone can remember, but no one really knows you. They just tell stories.”

“What sort of stories?” Vlad asked, glancing over his shoulder.

“Ah, you know. That you’re a reclusive billionaire or some kind of sex freak.” Lisa blinked and cleared her throat. “Or a ghost or a vampire or something.”

Vlad paused with his hand on one door and turned back to look at her. There was something odd about his face, she realized. She’d been too taken aback by his presence to really process that before. Even now she wasn’t sure what the trouble was; it just looked _wrong. _An optical illusion, but she couldn’t figure out what the illusion was. “And what do _you _think, Lisa of Lupu?”

She shrugged. “I think you need to get out more. It can’t be good for you to spend all your time cooped up in here.” Although maybe that was the wrong term. The place was hardly cramped. “You know, actually talk to people.”

“You’ve known me for all of two minutes, and you’re telling me I need to get out more.” Vlad snorted and pushed open the door before Lisa could retort.

And when she saw what was in the room, all she could say was, “_Oh._”

He had a _lab, _an honest-to-god lab, with workbenches and sinks and the kind of top-of-the-line equipment her supervisor would kill for. The walls were lined with books and computer stations. In the center of the room was a telescope, pointing up at the glass-domed ceiling. “Oh my god.” She whirled on Vlad. “Oh my god. This is yours?”

“Your generation blasphemes so easily,” Vlad noted, sounding so much like a stuffy old man Lisa had to choke back a giggle. “Once travelers risked coming to me for knowledge itself, not simply to fund their education.”

He sounded almost wistful. And—just how old was this guy, anyway? She knew medical education had evolved a lot over the decades, but he couldn’t be _that _old. He was still in really good shape, from what Lisa could see. “I don’t guess all this is WMA-accredited,” she said, only half paying attention, craning her neck to see further in. Was that a _cadaver _lying out on one table?

So she was startled to hear Vlad’s short laugh. “It is not,” he admitted, and waved at a couch that had been parked next to one of the bookshelves. “Come. Sit.”

The couch was antique and not in a trendy way, all overstuffed blue-and-gold flannel. For some reason she found it endearing. Vlad took a seat and crossed his long legs. _Big, _Lisa’s brain insisted again. She kind of wanted to sit on _him. _

“As it happens,” he said, and she halted, crossing her arms, without taking a seat. “I could use someone like you.”

“Oh?” Lisa asked. Her heart rate kicked up again.

Vlad gave her a long look as if he could hear it. “Not for what you’re thinking. What I need…is a _donor._”

And, just like that, Lisa saw through the optical illusion. Saw skin that was unmistakably gray rather than pale, long pointed ears sticking out through his curtain of dark hair. Deep burgundy eyes. And fangs—not the conveniently tiny movie-monster kind but honest-to-God fangs sticking out over his bottom lip.

“Holy shit,” Lisa gasped, and covered her mouth with both hands.

Vlad raised an eyebrow. He _liked _doing this, she realized. He liked the reveal. “I recommend you sit down, Lisa of Lupu.”

Fuck that. Before she could talk herself out of it, her hands were on Vlad’s face, cupping his jaw. His skin was cold and he froze at the touch. Lisa barely noticed. She ran her thumb along one of his fangs, pressing it down into his skin, and his hands made an aborted movement. She should be skeptical but he was so _real, _she’d seen him snap into focus just like _that. _“You’re a vampire.”

“My name—my _full _name,” he said, voice vibrating into her bones, “is Vlad Dracula Ṭepeṣ.”

Lisa’s eyes snapped back up to his, and he caught her like a trap. “No shit,” she breathed. For the first time she processed that she was holding his face between her hands, and he was currently at eye level with her chest. Despite what she’d come here intending to offer, it felt unbearably intimate.

Slowly Dracula blinked. “I think I’m going to like you,” he said, as if he couldn’t quite believe it.

It was impossible not to smirk. Then something else he said clicked. “And you want a blood donor? You want to drink from me?”

He nodded, one hand coming up to circle her wrist. His nails were long, sharp, black—more like talons, really. He didn’t put any pressure on the grip but somehow Lisa knew she wouldn’t be able to break away from him. “Drinking directly from humans is how I subsisted for centuries, but it has become…difficult, as of late. If you were to give me your blood willingly, as a supplement to my usual fare, I would provide for your schooling.”

“I…” Lisa licked her lips. This was dangerous—infinitely more dangerous than what she had bargained for. Somehow that just made her more interested in giving it a shot. “Starting now?”

She still had more questions, or she knew she would, but she couldn’t yank her eyes away from Dracula’s long enough to put them into words. He lifted an eyebrow. “If you like,” he said, trying for indifference, but she saw the flicker of hunger cross his face.

“Looks like _you _would,” Lisa muttered, and Dracula chuckled. Dracula! Laughing! This was a thing in Lisa’s life now! “Will it affect me? Besides the usual blood donation side effects.”

“It is a bit messier than the way blood donation is done now,” Dracula admitted. “You may feel a surge of adrenaline. You can fight back if you wish; it will have no effect on me. Or you may swoon.”

“Swoon,” Lisa repeated flatly.

Dracula shrugged. “I do have orange juice.”

Lisa blinked, and found a slow smile was spreading across her face. “Well, as long as you’ve got _that,_” she said, and leaned forward, letting her knees bend as she hit the couch cushions until she was straddling Dracula’s lap. Her free hand, the one not still in Dracula’s iron grip, slid down to grab his shoulder for stability. “Let’s call this an experiment, then,” she said, tilting her head to the side. “See if I can deal with donating every few weeks.”

“You would be too stubborn not to,” Dracula said in a longsuffering tone that made her forget they’d only been talking for fifteen minutes on the outside. His free hand fluttered against her ribs, almost awkward. Gruffly he said, “It will be easier if you turn around.”

And before she could do more than begin to shuffle in place, he scooped his arm around the back of her thighs, lifted her into the air like she weighed five pounds, and set her down with her back to his chest. She didn’t have time to blink. “_Warn _me next time,” she snapped, breathless. Obviously she had a long way to go in the manners department.

“Alright,” he rumbled in her ear. His voice vibrated through her ribs where they were pressed together and shot straight down between her legs. She couldn’t even squeeze her thighs together because they were bracketing Dracula’s. He wrapped one arm around her, just above her breasts, holding her in place while the knuckles of his other hand skimmed her jaw. “Here’s a warning: I’m going to bite you now.”

And he did.

Lisa had been hurt before, bitten by animals before, even. She knew how to push through the pain and fear. Dracula’s fangs sinking into her didn’t leave that luxury. From the first draw of blood adrenaline flooded her. She slammed her elbow back into Dracula’s ribs, kicked against his legs, but she may as well have been attacking a statue—in a few seconds the rush of panic passed and she was left aching, going limp in his grip.

That left only the feeling of his fangs in her throat, painful but steady pressure, almost relaxing in its constancy. Like the never-ending buzz of a tattoo machine. Slowly her muscles relaxed and she leaned back against Dracula, shuddering at the relief of tension. His body was getting warmer—maybe from their contact, maybe from the blood. She’d expected him to feel like a statue, too, but he had the same give she’d expect from a human. His talons dug into her shoulder, sharp even through the fabric of her shirt and hoodie. Nice hands, she thought dimly. Shame about the nails—_no, _she wasn’t going to go there—but it was impossible _not _to go there, not when she could feel every inch of him against her, not when some part of him was already inside her. She’d read vampire fiction, alright, she knew sex metaphors when she saw them.

Lisa relaxed, and breathed, and let her eyes close. After a moment—it couldn’t have been too long—his fangs slipped out of her throat. She made a soft, embarrassing noise, and refused to open her eyes as one of Dracula’s fingers traced over the puncture wounds.

“Stay here,” he said. Everything seemed oddly hushed. With as little ceremony as he’d put her on his lap, Dracula lifted her off of it, depositing her gently on the other side of the couch. Lisa blinked open heavy eyelids just in time to see him _whoosh _away, practically disappearing into thin air.

Okay, she thought, okay. That’s another thing that happens. She rubbed her elbow, still aching from where it had driven into Dracula’s ribs. She felt—yes, dizzy, lightheaded, a little out of it. All standard. She considered getting to her feet, just to make sure her legs still worked, but it seemed like too much trouble.

She was also so turned on it was honestly uncomfortable. All the awkward wetness of post-orgasm but without the actual orgasm. She squeezed her thigh; it didn’t help at all.

Dracula darted back into the room, bearing gifts of orange juice and peanut butter crackers like a nurse at a blood drive. Lisa snorted. “Do you eat these?” she asked, untwisting the juice cap.

“I don’t eat human food,” said Dracula. He settled on the couch next to her, and all the cushions dipped with his weight. “The kitchen is enchanted.”

Lisa took a long drink of juice and glanced at him. His skin looked almost flushed. With _her _blood. “Enchanted.” She nodded. “I have so many questions, I don’t know where to start.”

“Take your time,” he said, sounding surprisingly upbeat. She wondered how long he’d been in this castle by himself. If vampires had friends. Though he could be hiding an entire army in these halls for all she knew.

She settled back into the cushions, tugging her legs up in front of her and belatedly realizing she was still wearing shoes. Ah, well. Tearing open the pack of crackers, Lisa made a show of considering her options. “Bram Stoker,” she said finally, and Dracula rolled his eyes in such a _human _expression she grinned in response. “How much did he get right?”

“It was a smear job, so not much,” Dracula drawled. “The Stokers were a hunting family, but that line had all but died out by the time he was born. He was trying to recapture the old glory.”

Lisa swallowed one of the peanut butter crackers and ran her tongue along her teeth. “So no wives or thralls running around here?”

“No.” Dracula tilted his head. “Though it has been a while since I checked the dungeons.”

She grinned, and his eyes crinkled in response.

For a moment they fell into silence as Lisa ate. Then Dracula asked, “The experiment has finished. What is your conclusion?”

Experiment? Oh—oh, right. “That wasn’t too bad. I think I can manage a repeat every now and then.” She rubbed at the punctures. They felt smaller than she expected, tender scabs already forming. “School doesn’t start until August, but I can come back before that.”

“You really aren’t frightened of me,” Dracula said with a small frown.

Maybe that was offensive to vampires, not being frightened; ah, well. He would have to get used to it, around her.

“Are you kidding?” She shot him a look. “I was just planning on fucking you. This is too exciting to scare me.”

Dracula’s eyes had climbed farther up his forehead, like maybe he _hadn’t _understood her earlier, or else hadn’t expected her to say it so bluntly.

“Not that I would mind that. You can probably tell.” Her arousal had faded a little now that she wasn’t sitting on his lap, but still.

She didn’t know if vampires could blush, but she thought Dracula might have been. “It seemed inappropriate to bring up.”

Lisa nodded solemnly and licked a few drops of orange juice from her lip. “So you _do _have some manners.” She pushed herself to her feet, swaying a little at the head rush, but it quickly faded. “I’ll be back in six weeks? For the next blood donation?”

“If you like.” He glanced pointedly out at the lab. “Though if you would like to return before then…”

“In that case, I’ll be back tomorrow,” Lisa said.

She rose to her feet, brushing the crumbs from her jeans, and Dracula rose with her. “I hope,” he said, dipping into a bow that still left him towering over her, “that this will be the start of a productive partnership.”

“It will,” she said firmly. Thought: _I think I’m going to like you, too._

**Author's Note:**

> comments & kudos are, as always, excellent.


End file.
